Tag: Ted DiBiase Jr.

Of the “Big Four” WWE PPVs my favorite has always been the Royal Rumble. Sure WrestleMania has bigger marquee matches but there’s something awesome about seeing a bunch of dudes clubbering one another and tossing each other out of the ring and seeing what random legend they bring back in to throw a couple dudes out of the ring before ultimately getting eliminated.

Today we’re going to take a look at the 2009 edition of the Royal Rumble coming to us from the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

When I was a kid Saturday Night’s Main Event was kind of a big deal since most of the televised wrestling matches were King Kong Bundy or Ric Rude or whoever squashing the fuck out of S.D. Jones or some other job guy. If you wanted to see guys who could win taking on other guys who could win you had to order PPVs…or tune in to NBC a couple times a year. It was a decent concept, but it stopped being a thing in ’92.

In 2006 the WWE and NBC brought it back. It ran for a couple years before being replaced by Tribute for the Troops. This is, to date, the final Saturday Night’s Main Event.

The year is 2009 and we’re deep in the Guest Host Era of Raw. The week of Thanksgiving 2009, that host was former pro-grappler/announcer/governor, Jesse “The Body” Ventura. While a lot of the guest hosts were stupid as fuck, this one was actually alright, since Jesse Ventura had worked for the company for years and actually knew about wrestling.

The main event of the night was an Eight Man “Breakout” Battle Royal with the winner getting a shot at the World Heavyweight or WWE Championship. Jesse Ventura would call the action but before he got down to business, he brought out his old broadcast partner…the corpse of Gorilla Monsoon! Wait, no, he brought out Vince McMahon cosplaying as Bob Backlund.

Remember when that time when everyone hated Triple H and he would come out and do long promos as a heel authority figure? No, that other time…back in 2011. This is a Ten Man Over the Top Battle Royal for the WWE Intercontinental Championship that Triple H set up because Cody Rhodes told Triple H he was bad at his job.

Of these ten men only Sheamus is still employed by and wrestling for the WWE, since the Sin Cara in this match was still the original Sin Cara at this point if I’m not mistaken.